NASA Just Announced It Can’t Afford to Get Humans to Mars

July 14, 2017

For many years, it has been quite obvious that NASA planned to make a journey to Mars. However, in a recent interview, one of NASA’s spokesmen explained that we actually don’t have the funds to afford such a trip.

Sadly, if they were planning to go ahead with the proposed journey by the 2030’s, it appears that they may have to wait.

“I can’t put a date on humans on Mars, and the reason really is the other piece is, at the budget levels we described, this roughly 2 percent increase, we don’t have the surface systems available for Mars,” William H. Gertenmaier announced.

“And that entry, descent, and landing is a huge challenge for us for Mars.”

However, according to reports, if water is found on the Moon, the agency may have plans to visit there. “If we find out there’s water on the Moon, and we want to do more extensive operations on the Moon to go explore that, we have the ability with Deep Space Gateway to support an extensive Moon surface program,” he said. “If we want to stay focused more toward Mars we can keep that.”

Unfortunately, it appears that the reality of the situation may be that both projects get put on hold due to funding.

Basically, the SLS and Orion crafts are costing NASA quite a bit. Due to this, the endeavor into preparing for the Mars trip has yet to even begin. For now, we will have to hold onto our hopes for our precious plan B until another time. With that being said, it isn’t far-fetched to believe that NASA will find a way, especially with supporters like Elon Musk working to lower the costs.